Computing systems range from smaller single-user platforms having a single computing processor executing one or more user-level applications at a time, to enterprise-level systems having hundreds of processors or more executing large-scale application processes potentially serving thousands of users at a time.
As these computing systems have become more and more complex, determining how well a given process is functioning has become more difficult. System developers, product management teams and others who want to monitor workflows and system processes often must employ complex computing analytics-based applications which provide a great deal of information. However, the great complexity of the analytics-based application programs brings with it a necessity for a great deal of time spent by a user in the configuration and operation of the program. Launching a special program focused on analytics typically provides a user a rich feature set that is time consuming to configure properly.
For a new user of complex analytics-based computing application programs, there is often a great deal of information available on workflows and systems processes, but it is often time consuming for a new user of the complex computing application programs to develop enough expertise associated with the complex computing application programs to make efficient use of the application program and also be able to set up and operate the functionality to make sense of the voluminous data. Even veteran users of analytics-based application programs find configuration and use of such programs to be tedious.
In addition to configuration complexity, another issue that often surfaces when using such complex analytics-based application programs is in determining particular analytics data of that application program that is applicable to or otherwise associated with a particular aspect of a website or workflow the user is interested in. Typical analytics-based application programs collect a wide variety of data in many different areas, over entire servers and websites, for example. Thus, a user desiring to zero in on data applicable to a particular webpage of a web site, for example, is often forced to sift through a large amount of data before determining whether any of that data even applies to an area the user is interested in.
Further, unless the configuration of the application has been set perfectly, there is no guarantee that the large volume of data even includes analytics data of the area or webpage that the user is interested in.
It would therefore be beneficial to provide a system for providing analytics data that is lightweight and easy to use.